Category Archives: Military Doctrine

Indra Varuna: Hey Robert! Off topic but you think of Vox? (the progressive website and not Voxday)

It’s look like a Democrat mouthpiece, they published a article against Venezuela and another that Israel shouldn’t be boycotted, but they’re progressive in almost everything.

I don’t know Vox very well. I think they are probably OK, but I don’t read them that much. I think the last I read there was a debate on the B-W IQ gap between Ezra Klein and Sam Harris. Pretty much a waste of a two-hour podcast. They’re probably pretty awful on Cultural Left stuff.

Vox is really just the bullshit Democratic Party, in particular the left wing of the Democratic Party, which is still shit in my opinion.

Go to Daily Kos sometime. Sign up for an account. I have a lifetime ban on Daily Kos for “anti-Semitism.” Really I just attacked the Israeli cancer that is metastasizing in Palestine.

Some Kossack wrote an article attacking Syria from a BS POV and I asked, “What’s the capital of your country, Tel Aviv?” I basically said, “You are not an American. You are just another dual loyalty / agent of a foreign power / dual citizen type.” Well the Kossacks flipped out, called me a ‘virulent anti-Semite” and permabanned me.

If you want to understand the cowardly and craven left wing of this pathetic party, go to Daily Kos and read around.

In a nutshell:

DK is split on Israel, but most Kossacks love Israel. However, a minority of Kossacks have had it up to here with the Israeli infestation and attack them ferociously. Kos put in a directive that all debate on the subject of Israel is banned. I suppose that is where it is now. Not catastrophic but not real great either.

The real problem is that Daily Kos is really (((Daily Kos))). Like most other entities in American life, Daily Kos is Jewed to the hilt. 60% of the Democratic Party’s money is Jewish money, and most of it comes with pro-Israeli strings attached.

You don’t read much about Venezuela on Daily Kos, but what you do read is pretty bad. I read one article that was pro-Venezuela, but the commenters were all bitterly against the piece, and one said it should be flagged and banned as opposing some Kos policy. In other words, if you support Venezuela, you are violating Daily Kos policy.

Keep in mind that even Sanders was horrific on Venezuela. He called Chavez a “Communist dictator.”

The truth is that the Left is the US is pretty much crap. The actual Left in the US is usually pretty OK, but the majority of the Left in the US are these maggots called “liberal Democrats” who are distinguished by the fact that there is almost nothing progressive about them.

The US Democratic Party has long been pretty good on domestic policy, but they have always been horrifically reactionary on foreign policy. Even my late father, a proud ADA Democrat, was a Cold War Democrat who was horribly reactionary on foreign policy. Also, since he had been in the Marines, he believed that the US military could absolutely do no wrong, and he supported the US military to the hilt no matter who they were bombing, shooting, killing and slaughtering at the moment. It didn’t matter. They were always right. You could not oppose the US military in his presence. He would almost threaten to hit you. It was that bad.

Bottom line is the US is pretty hopeless. There’s no real Left in the country, and the Democratic Party is pathetically reactionary on foreign policy. The very idea that liberal Democrats are are even leftwing in any way is pretty risible.

I don’t have a high opinion of this reactionary idiot Tony Perkins. While the label of bigot and hater seems correct about him, unfortunately a number of things he says about homosexuality are flat out true. Others are ugly opinions, exaggerations, silliness, or untruths.

The dossier against Perkins can be found here at the site of one of the worst SJW organizations out there, the toxic and cancerous Southern Poverty Law Center. Let’s look at the charges:

contending that gay rights advocates intend to round up Christians in “boxcars.”

False. OK, that’s fanaticism.

But sometimes I wonder what sort of SJW dictatorship our SJW commissar overlords would have in store for us if they ever seized power. Looking at how hate-filled, vindictive, and out and out vicious your typical gay rights homosexual is nowadays, it’s not unreasonable to fear all sorts of bad things from these maniacs.

To give you an example, these gay activists absolutely hate me although I have supported gay rights since the 1980’s when it was dangerous to do so. That’s a good 35 years. And I work on their political campaigns, though I should probably quit based on how they treat me.

In order to be a proper gay rights ally and avoid being a homophobe, the goalposts have now been moved to positions that are so far beyond the endzone that most straight men would qualify as homophobes by default simply for having the normal opinions that straight men have towards male homosexuality (hint: they have a very low opinion of it).

“What most people either don’t realize or willfully ignore is that only 16 percent of Islam is a religion — the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn’t a judicial or economic code — but a faith. So to suggest that we would be imposing some sort of religious test on Muslims is inaccurate. Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment.”

— FRC email, December 2015

True. That’s probably about right, sorry.

“Those who practice Islam in its entirety, it’s not just a religion. It’s an economic system, it’s a judicial system, and it is a military – a military system. And it is – it has Shariah law that you’ve heard about and those things will tear and destroy the fabric of a democracy. So we have to be very clear about our laws and restrain those things that would harm the whole. We are a nation – let me be very clear about this. We are a nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, that’s the foundation of our nation, not Islam, but the Judeo-Christian God.”

— Washington Watch radio show, September 2014

Mostly true. He’s wrong as usual about the Founding Fathers, who were more deists than anything else, but this is standard fundie nonsense.

The rest about Islam is more or less 100% fact.

“The videos are titled ‘It Gets Better.’ They are aimed at persuading kids that although they’ll face struggles and perhaps bullying for ‘coming out’ as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better. … It’s disgusting. And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle.”

—FRC fundraising letter, August 2011

False. The It Gets Better videos are not part of a project to recruit kids into the gay lifestyle. I doubt if they are trying to tell kids homosexuality is ok either. These videos are aimed at gay teenagers who are distraught, depressed, and have a high attempted suicide rate, showing them that no matter how much they are suffering now, things will get better as they get older.

It’s probably not true that gays cannot turn straights gay, but many straight women have chosen a bisexual orientation, and many straight men have chosen to engage in bisexual behavior, with more and more doing this all the time. And while you can’t turn straight people gay, that doesn’t stop gay and bisexual men from trying.

I can’t count how many times they have tried to seduce me, and they’ve done it to a lot of my friends too. Actually bisexual men are far worse about this because I don’t have much to do with gay men, and bisexual men are everywhere running about in typical straight society. They can get pretty verbally coercive and cajoling about trying to get you to join in their faggy fun too. You need to stop talking to them because they will never stop trying to cajole you into their faggy fun and games.

“Those who understand the homosexual community – the activists – they’re very aggressive, they’re – everything they accuse us of they are in triplicate. They’re intolerant, they’re hateful, vile, they’re spiteful. …. To me, that is the height of hatred, to be silent when we know there are individuals that are engaged in activity, behavior, and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation.”

—Speaking to the Oak Initiative Summit, April 2011

True. This is actually true. Gay activists are out and out ugly. In fact, I am starting hate gay men (though I should not feel that way, I know) due to so many nasty and ugly interactions with them. I will continue to support them politically of course, but the less I deal with them otherwise, the better. Gay men nowadays are the worst SJW’s of them all, like SJW’s on steroids.

False. But I really doubt if homosexuality is going to destroy the country. That’s a bit much.

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”

— FRC website, 2010

True. This is a bit vicious, but gay men are vastly overrepresented among pedophiles. 35% of child molestations are molestations of boys by men. Almost all of these men are homosexual pedophiles.

False. But saying that pedophilia is a gay problem is just wrong. And it’s vicious.

The marriage debate “is literally about the entire culture: it’s about the rule of law, it’s about the country, it’s about our future, it’s about redefining the curriculum in our schools, it’s about driving a wedge between parent and child, it’s about the loss of religious freedom, it’s about the inability to be who we are as a people.”

— The Janet Mefford Show, May 22, 2014

False. None of this is true, but I can see why these Christians are upset about it. They say it goes against their religion. Well, OK. So how do you expect them to act?

Part of the FRC’s strategy is to tout the false claim that gay men are more likely to sexually abuse children. The American Psychological Association, among others, has concluded that, “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.”

True. Yes, and the APA is flat out wrong and is disregarding all of the evidence of psychological “science” on this issue. You wonder why people say the social science are not sciences. Well, look no further. Actually gay men are 12 times more likely to molest children than straight men are.

Nevertheless, most gay men are obviously not pedophiles.

As the show ended, Perkins stated, “If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children.

False. I do not think it is fair to say that homosexuals pose a risk to our children. “Keep the faggots away from our kids!” seems like a mean and unnecessary thing to say.

In late 2010, Perkins held a webcast to discuss the dire consequences of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Dubious statistics from a poll commissioned by the FRC and the Center for Security Policy – which was named an anti-Muslim hate group in 2015 – were used during the webcast.

The webcast also mentioned the FRC report, Mission Compromised, written by retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, the FRC’s senior fellow for national security. The report contended that allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly would undermine morale and discipline and infringe on the religious freedom of military chaplains, who would be forced to accept homosexuality and would no longer be permitted to express their religious beliefs about it.

In addition, Maginnis predicted that heterosexual service members would be forced to take “sensitivity classes” that promote the “homosexual lifestyle.” He added: “Homosexual activists seek to force the U.S. military to embrace their radical views and sexual conduct, no matter the consequences for combat effectiveness.”

False. I believe that gays are now serving openly in the US military, and this has not affected combat effectiveness like the howlers predicted.

On Oct. 11, 2010, The Washington Post published a commentary by Perkins in which he repeated his argument that anti-bullying policies are not really intended to protect students. “Homosexual activist groups like GLSEN [Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network] … are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family.”

Half true. Sadly, this is correct. Gay activists are indeed using the anti-bullying push to promote tolerance of homosexuals, to redefine the family, and worse, to promote out and out affirmation of homosexuality.

In fact, I would argue that it goes far beyond that, and that presently gay rights activists are promoting the open celebration of homosexuality. As a straight man, I fail to see why I should jump up and down and cheer for homosexuality. What’s so great about it? Who needs it? If it disappeared from the planet tomorrow, would that be a bad thing? It probably would not, as homosexuality offers zero benefits to society while causing a long list of societal problems.

However, obviously the anti-bullying movement is also designed to protect gay students.

In 2013, Perkins claimed on CNN that allowing gay people into the Boy Scouts would put children in danger of sexual assault. When pressed by the CNN host, Perkins again resorted to the FRC’s stock claim, as Perkins once put it, that pedophilia “is a homosexual problem.” “They [Boy Scouts] are trying to create an environment that is protective of children,” he said. “This [allowing LGBT Scouts and Scout leaders] doesn’t make it more protective. There is a disproportionate number of male on boy – when we get on pedophilia, male on boy is a higher incident rate of that.”

True. Well, of course letting gay men by scoutmasters puts boys at increased risk of molestation. Isn’t that obvious? There have been plenty of closeted gay men who were scoutmasters in the past, and they molested more than a few boys. Why do you think the Scouts had the ban in the first place? Because this was a well known long-standing problem in scouting! It was hard enough to try to sort out the closet cases among the scoutmasters, and the new policy was going to flood scouts with a lot more gay scoutmasters. Just what the Scouts need.

Despite gains made for LGBT equality, Perkins and the FRC have continued their anti-gay activities, including opposition to the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). According to Perkins, President Obama was working with the “totalitarian homosexual lobby” to sneak ENDA into law and should that happen, freedom of religion will be “destroyed.”

Opinion. Well, you know, this is just wrong. In general, I think that it should be illegal to discriminate against homosexuals in housing, employment, etc. simply for being homosexuals.

But we ought to be able to discriminate on other grounds. For instance, suppose a flamboyantly gay man applies at my store to be a customer clerk. My clientele is mostly straight men, a lot of whom are macho rednecks who will not take kindly to a screaming faggot asking, “Can I help you?” In this case, I might be able to hire a gay man if he was straight acting and promised to be quiet about his orientation so as not to scare off my clientele.

Suppose you have a restaurant. The hosts are people who greet customers and show them their seats. I have a right to turn down a flamboyant homosexual who wants to work as a host because he will scare off my diners. Instead, I would happy to employ him in a backroom somewhere, but he can’t be out there greeting diners.

Other than these minor cases though, I think gays should have the same employment and housing rights as members of racial groups or the two genders.

Perkins also has worked to keep America safe from Betty Crocker. In September 2013, he called for a boycott of the iconic brand because General Mills, which produces it, donated custom cakes to three LGBT couples in Minnesota who were married after the state legalized same-sex marriage a month earlier.

Opinion. Wow. Ugly.

In 2015, as the FRC tilted into anti-Muslim sentiment – especially with the hiring of retired Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin – Perkins said that Islam is such a danger that Muslim Americans should not have the same religious freedoms as other citizens.

Opinion. Not sure what he means by this, but this is ugly.

After a man with radical Islamic beliefs fatally shot 49 people at an Orlando LGBT nightclub in June 2016, Perkins pointed the finger at the Obama Administration – claiming that the administration marginalized Christians and elevated Islam. “We have to deal with the underlying issue, which is an ideology that’s incompatible with American liberty,” Perkins wrote. “An ideology, tragically, that this administration has empowered through its public policy and private diplomacy.”

False. Yuck. The problem here is that this attack had nothing to with Islam. The attacker himself was a gay man, so he was not killing gay men out of hatred or bigotry. Instead, he had had an affair with a Puerto Rican gay man who he met at that bar, and that man had given him HIV. This was a Puerto Rican gay bar. So he decided to take revenge against Puerto Rican gay men in general by shooting up the bar.

In a 2016 FRC email to followers about the issue, Perkins warned: “If government can force the ‘normalization’ or even the celebration of something as universally unnatural as men using women’s restrooms and vice versa, then it can force the rest of its agenda on the American people very easily,” resulting in “social chaos” and the breakdown of all “sexual inhibition and morality.”

False. I doubt if that’s going to happen, but at 60, I would love to see sexual inhibition and morality break down a lot more. Perhaps I would get more dates.

During 2016, Perkins was part of the Republican committee as a delegate from Louisiana that created the GOP platform.

Perkins reportedly proposed a plank that supported conversion therapy for minors, though the wording, apparently revised from the original, does not specifically mention conversion therapy – a pseudoscientific practice that claims to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight, and has been denounced by every major U.S. medical and mental health association. The platform committee ultimately passed a resolution affirming “the right of parents to determine the proper treatment or therapy, for their minor children.”

Opinion. Conversion therapy is a controversial issue, and in general it does not seem to work, although it is proven that sex surrogacy can help some lesbians to enjoy sex with men.

After Trump’s election, the FRC and Perkins were heavily involved in the formation of policy for the new administration. FRC Senior Fellow Kenneth Blackwell was named the head of domestic policy for the transition team. The FRC also took steps to ensure the new administration would undo President Obama’s work advancing LGBT equality – efforts that come after Perkins’ June 2016 claim that a Trump presidency would be better for the LGBT community than a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Sure, Trump is a horrifying hawk, and all of his promises about keeping us out of foreign wars have turned to crap. He has assembled one of the most hawkish cabinets one could imagine, including the terrifyingly insane John Bolton, the scariest man in America. Pompeo isn’t much better. Haley is catastrophic as UN ambassador.

Trump has already been far worse than Obama on war, especially in Syria. He has been much more bellicose than Obama on North Korea and Iran and even on Venezuela, on which he has threatened to launch an attack. He has also been much more hawkish on Russia, sending lethal military aid to Ukraine and attacking Russian forces a number of times in Syria.

His nominee for Secretary of State, Pompeo, recently bragged that the US had killed 200 Russians. It’s not true, and more about that later, but it’s a chilling thing to say.

In addition, since Trump came in, the rebels have made a number of miraculously precise artillery attacks on Russian forces and the Russian Embassy. A number of Russian soldiers, including some high ranking officers and even a general, were killed. A number of these Russia-killing attacks were by ISIS, and US advisers were known to be in the direct vicinity at the time. In fact, ISIS forces had just driven a convoy past US forces, and US forces had not done anything. A lot of people are saying that there is no way the rebels could have pulled such accurate high profile attacks on Russians that they did, and that the US must have helped them target these Russians.

So the US has already killed a number of Russians in Syria. Obama hadn’t killed one Russian. Trump, instead of being Putin’s pet, should instead by named The Russian Killer.

Trump removed all of the Rules of Engagement that Obama had put in for air strikes against ISIS. These rules had been quite strict and reasonable, but they had resulted in a number of civilian casualties. After removing the ROI’s, civilian casualties due to US strikes rose by 5-10 times. Trump killed a lot of Syrian civilians for no good reason.

However, Hillary’s comments about destroying Syria’s airfields go far beyond anything that Trump has even done so far, so as horrific as Trump has been on military matters, Hillary still probably would have been worse.

War Psychosis runs deep in US society, infecting all US elites across the spectrum and much of the clinically insane US population. We are simply a people who love war and get off on killing as many people as possible. We are a nation of bloodthirsty killers.

This is taken from Moon of Alabama, one of the few places on the Web where you can find actual honest commentary about the issues of the day. If you will notice as you read below, you will see that almost every single thing the media has been telling you about Russia for some time now is a straight up 100% lie.

What is shocking is that almost 100% of the Western media is in on these lies. Until Tucker Carlson questioned the latest fake chemical attack on Fox News the other day, not one single US news outlet had questioned any of the anti-Russian lies that the media pumped out. And Fox is still presumably full of people pumping out the latest anti-Russian bullshit.

This is quite striking.

With all of our media outlets, wouldn’t you think that there might be even one that might go against the dominant narrative? But there isn’t. The entire US media is in lockstep on all of this stuff.

The only dissenters are some far Left and far Right outlets on the Internet that are always broke and have small audiences. Even these small audiences are too much for the powers that be though, so they are trying to shut them down in various ways.

One way is via getting rid of Net Neutrality. Now that Net Neutrality is gutted, the ISP’s, who are after all part of the same power structure that controls the media and the state, will have the power to put any alternative media in the slow lane and offer fast lanes only for favored media. Getting rid of Net Neutrality has always been in part about getting rid of alternative voices to what for all intents and purposes is the Deep State.

In addition, the fake news bullshit story was immediately picked up by all powers all over the world.

Obama immediately decided that any news attacking his administration or US foreign policy was fake news.

The Democratic Party instantly said that all news against the Democratic Party was fake news.

The same thing happened on the Republican side to an even greater extent.

The fake news controversy was then weaponized by the Deep State to go after alternative media that is calling bullshit on all the Deep State’s wicked machinations. Google and Facebook then wrote new “anti-Deep State” algorithms that put the entire US progressive media lower in search rankings so it would be harder to find them.

As you can see, Google and Facebook are not cool or groovy companies. They’re as much as part of the Deep State as the rest of them. These are large corporations and part of the Deep State is the corporations. They are run by billionaires and another part of the Deep State is the very rich. So you can see that even the modest and very minor alternative media is already too much for the Deep State and the Powers That Be.

The best way to see the Deep State is to see as The Powers That Be, the powerful group that runs this country, the foreign policy establishment, or the ruling class. These are the people who run this country and in particular control its foreign policy.

It is important to note that the Deep State includes nearly all US corporations and nearly all of the US rich, the 1%, because after all, the sole purpose of US foreign policy is to benefit large corporations and the rich, the 1%. There’s nothing in US foreign policy for us, you, me, and the little guy. In fact, you could argue that US foreign policy is objectively opposed to us. It’s a hostile force that works against us.

That’s a big reason why any American who doesn’t want to fight for the rich and the corporations should never join the US military. You’re fighting and dying for the Watsons, the Trumps, General Electric, Exxon, and AT & T. If you want to go fight and die for those entities, be my guest, but I doubt if many Americans join the military to do that.

So the US media is for all intents completely controlled at least as far as foreign policy is concerned. I would not say it is controlled on US domestic policy, though it is more controlled on that than you think. The Deep State is indeed split into a Right faction and a Left faction. It’s just that the Left faction isn’t really left at all. The Left faction of the Deep State is, for instance, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We may as well be living in the USSR with Pravda and the rest of the state media. That’s how much real press freedom we have in the West.

What is even more shocking is that it’s not just the US media that is controlled. Nearly the entire Western media from right to left has been lockstep on all of this anti-Russia campaign. So it is not just the US that lives under controlled media. All of us in the West live under completely controlled media with no dissident media to speak of other than a few broke and little heard of outlets.

Everything you read below is true. The only thing that I am not sure of is Russia influencing the US election. They might have tried to do that, but even that story seems pretty hokey.

The rest of it is straight up facts. If you read carefully, you will see that nearly every fact below completely contradicts an alternative fact that was supplied by the controlled Western media.

All of you in the West are being lied to, all the time. All day all of the time and everywhere. There’s almost no escape from the Western Deep State spider web.

Trump Asks Russia To Roll Over – It Won’t

Donald Trump may perceive these bad cop/good cop tweets as a serious way to negotiate with Russia. They ain’t.

Donald J. Trump – @realDonaldTrump – 10:57 AM UTC – 11 Apr 2018
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!

Donald J. Trump – @realDonaldTrump – 11:37 AM UTC – 11 Apr 2018
Our relationship with Russia is worse now than it has ever been, and that includes the Cold War. There is no reason for this. Russia needs us to help with their economy, something that would be very easy to do, and we need all nations to work together. Stop the arms race?

Russia said it would destroy the platforms that launch the missiles, not only the missiles themselves. Did nobody explain the difference to Trump?

There is reason that U.S. relations with Russia are now worse than they have been for some time and Russia is not responsible for these. The GW Bush administration killed the Anti-Ballistic-Missile treaty which guaranteed Mutually Assured Destruction and thus strategic stability. The Obama administration launched a trillion dollar program to ramp up U.S. nuclear capabilities and ballistic missile defense with the aim of achieving superiority in a nuclear conflict.

It is cynical to say that “Russia needs us to help with their economy”. The U.S. under Trump is waging economic war on Russia by implementing more and more economic sanctions. The last round on Friday targeted Russian industrialists, many of whom are not even aligned with Putin. Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, disliked in the Kremlin, lost 15% of his fortune. The Rubel plummeted against the dollar for two days in a row. U.S. Treasury stooges are now traveling in Europe to press European banks to shut down all services for Russian companies.

bigger(Ironically both economic attack vectors will help Putin’s program. Since 2014 Russia has been pressing its oligarchs to repatriate the billions the stashed in ‘western’ offshore banks. They will now do so out of fear of confiscations. The lower Rubel will increase local production and allow for cheaper exports.)

The U.S. incited Georgia to attack Russia. It ‘regime changed’ the Ukraine. It attacks Syria, an old Russian ally. Then there are the hoaxes that get attributed to Russia without any evidence. Russia did not influence the U.S. election. It did not poison the Skripals. There was no ‘chemical attack’ in Douma.

Russia has all kinds of reasons to be hostile to the U.S. but always stays calm and well mannered. It is stupid to mistake that for fear or inferiority. Taunting Russia like Trump now does will only increase its resistance to U.S. moves.

Is Trump trying to make an offer to really help Russia’s economy and to stop the arms race?

If Russia would roll over and give up on Syria would Trump really lift the sanctions? Would he really stop the U.S. race for nuclear supremacy? Could he even promise to do such? And why would anyone believe Trump anyway?

Unlike western European countries, Russia is not led by yapping poodles. The Russian government and its people will not roll over. They have historically never done so. President Putin will start his period of governance on May 7 with a war cabinet structured and manned for conflict. He expects a long fight.

Russia will have to respond to any U.S. strike on Syria. It needs to do so to keep face and the faith of its allies. But it also needs to so in a way that avoids further escalation. Something that is very strong, in a different theater and not attributable? Or something that is openly targeting U.S. interests, but not U.S. soldiers, in the Middle East?

It is Israel which is behind the war on Syria and which is pressing for further conflict. There are one million Russians in Israel, many of whom are not even Jewish. Could Russia ask them for help to change the strategic picture? Or should it increase support for those who directly fight the Zionist state?

East Ghouta trench warfare. Good Lord that fighting looks brutal. Some truly vicious close-range trench warfare can be seen in this video. This what war looks like – the real thing. I will say that SAA and allied Palestinian, government and Arab Nationalist militias have very high morale from all the footage I have seen. It’s amazing as I am sure they are taking serious casualties. I saw a video today of a Syrian village of ~400 in 2011. 13% of its men were military age, and seven years later, almost all of them are dead, fighting for the government. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that the government forces are not taking serious casualties.

There is so much I could say about this operation. Let us just say that everything you are hearing in the US and Western media is completely biased and a lot of it is flat out lies. The civilians in the area largely support the Syrian Army and oppose the Al Qaeda-type rebels.

The rebels have been using East Ghouta for years as a base to shell Damascus. Damascus gets shelled almost every day for years now by these character. The mortars are usually just aimed at the city but in recent months a number have targeted the Russian Embassy and meeting between various Russians, military and aid organizations, in the area. It is thought that the rebels do not have the ability to target Russians with this accuracy. What is going on here is that US, Turkish, UAE, Qatari, Saudi, Jordanian and Israeli intelligence (mostly US) is working closely with the rebels in an effort to deliberately target Russians. So the US is actually killing Russians in Syria deliberately and has been doing so forever.

Mostly this shows the folly of pacifists or isolationists ever voting Republican. Republicans have been the party of the hawks ever since the Cold War and it hasn’t slowed down yet. Of course Trump shifted to ultra-hawk because he is a hard US conservative and almost all of these people are fanatical warmongers. The Republicans have been far more hawkish than the Democrats since 1946.

The Democrats may be the party of Humanitarian Bombers, but the Republicans don’t even pretend to that. Instead, it’s all about how many people you can kill, civilians or not. Civilian deaths in Syrian and Iraq skyrocketed after Trump “took the gloves off” (something Republicans always do – gloves are for soft Democratic girly men). Why was this a good thing? Why did Trump massacre all of these Syrian and Iraqi civilians and why are bloodthirsty Americans cheering for this slaughter?

When East Aleppo was liberated, there were intense negotiations at the end to rescue 12 US intelligence officers who were holed up with the Al Qaeda rebels until the bitter end. Websites even published the names of these men.

Here again, the Western media is screaming. Humanitarian corridors to evacuate civlians have been activated and regular aid convoys are getitng through. The strikes have been mostly surgical as in East Aleppo. The US is just freaking out because it’s Al Qaeda type jihadis are getting defeated in this Damascus suburb. The US wants to keep its jihadis in East Aleppo to rain mortars down on Damascus every day to show that Assad cannot even control his own capital. It’s mostly an appearances thing, but then appearances and symbolism play greater roles in warfare than most know.

There haven’t been any hospitals stricken in Ghouta. Remember when “the last hospital in East Aleppo” got destroyed 15-20 times over a period of months. It was always “the last hospital in Aleppo.” How many last hospitals in Aleppo were there? There can’t have been more than one. The artillery and airstrikes in Aleppo were mostly surgical. Many of the hospitals bombed had long since been taken over as rebel bases. This is something the US media never told you. Yes, some civilians are getting their property taken away from them, but that is because they supported the rebels. It has nothing to with ethnicity and there is no ethnic cleansing. Sunni Arabs who supported Assad are to some extent displacing Sunni Arabs who supported the rebels.

There was another false flag chemical weapons attack in Ghoutha earlier, championed by pathological liar Nicki Haley. Western officials warned of the attack earlier, a sure sign that this was another false flag. So far, all chemical weapons attacks in Syria have been rebel false flags. I have studied all of them, and I haven’t seen one attack by the Syrian government yet. The Syrian government simply does not use chemical weapons. It’s not that they are nice people. If you are a rebel or rebel supporter, you may be arrested and taken prisoner by the army and transferred to a military prison. The death rate is high in that prisoner and 10-15,000 prisoners may have already been executed, mostly by hanging. That said, chemical weapons and massacres of villagers are not the SAA’s style. They’re nasty, but they are just not that type of nasty.

Of course, a few days after the fake attack, the SAA liberated this Ghouta town and promptly discovered a chemical weapons factory. The rebels had been producing their own chemicals and then releasing them in false flag attacks as they have been doing since the start of the war. Even the US military now admits that most if not all of the chemical weapons attacks in this war so far were not done by the Syrian government. Amazing – the military tells the truth where the controlled (US Pravda) media never does.

Ghouta is 70% cleared. Many rebels have left on buses to be bussed to other rebel zones,mostly in Idlib. A number of others have taken advantage of an amnesty program that has been offered by the government for years now. Today, 10,000 civilians fled to safety via a humanitarian corridor. The rebels have been firing at these corridors for some time now, shooting at civilians who are trying to flee. A number have been killed in this way.

Great article from Global Research. I am not sure if this war is actually going to happen. Israel’s apparent causus belli for the war is because they say that Iran has built a missile factory in Lebanon. Iran has indeed built a missile factory in Lebanon. I am not sure where it is and why Israel cannot take it out. Maybe it is underground. I would guess that it is in the Bekaa Valley.

The missile count for Hezbollah is not correct. Hezbollah actually 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. There are reports that only six of those are precision-guided, but that is not correct. I don’t know how many precision-guided missiles they have, but they have a lot more than six.

The Lebanese Army is not very good. The effective army of Lebanon is Hezbollah. That is why they had 85% support in a recent poll in Lebanon. A recent move by Hezbollah to consolidate power among itself and its allies in the Parliament actually had the support of 47% of Lebanese Christians. Hezbollah is in an alliance with, among others, General Aoun’s Christian faction. As you can see, Lebanon is a lot more complex than Christians versus Muslims.

The real enemies of Hezbollah are the Lebanese Sunnis around President Hariri. Recently he went to Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis, with a go-ahead from the US, actually kidnapped him and forced him to stay in Arabia. They also demanded that he resign from the Presidency. He resigned so they would let him go, but when he got back to Lebanon, he withdrew his resignation and once again assumed his position.

The Saudis think that Lebanon is their bitch, but they are wrong. The Hariri faction does not have wide support in Lebanon – maybe 20-25% support. The Saudis were trying to provoke a crisis in Lebanon by having Hariri resign. This might set off internal conflict in Lebanon, which the Saudis want, or it might have been to cause a crisis as an excuse to attack Lebanon. “Hariri Resigns, Calls Lebanon a Hezbollah Dictatorship” would be the headlines, and then the US, Israel or Arabia would use that as a go-ahead to be humanitarian bombers and attack Lebanon “to restore democracy.”

Make no mistake about it, the Saudis want Hezbollah gone. They also want Iran dead and gone. Neither is going anywhere soon.

Iran, Hezbollah (Lebanon), and Syria form the Axis of Resistance. These are the only three official state enemies that Israel has left. They’ve taken out Libya and Iraq. If the Houthis win in Yemen, they might join the Axis of Resistance also. The Gulf states are not friendly to Israel, but Israel does not regard them as enemy states. They even have a long term alliance with the Saudis. Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan and Egypt. However, popular opinion in both countries is dead set against Israel, but both are dictatorships that do not represent popular will.

The Israel-hostile Muslim Brotherhood was replaced by a secular dictator supported by the US, Israel, and the Saudis. The Saudis hate the Muslim Brotherhood because they see them as rivals who want to rule Saudi Arabia. Doctrinally, there is not much difference between the two. I believe Qatar dislikes the MB also for the same reason. The MB is huge in Jordan and occupies many seats in Parliament. Hamas is the MB of Palestine, but they never talk about that because Palestine is quite secular, and the MB is not popular there for that reason. The MB is big among Sunnis in Northern Lebanon. Of course they have always been huge in Egypt – their birthplace. Hassan al-Banna created the MB in Egypt in 1928.

Lebanon as a state absolutely hates Israel. They have no relations with them, and the two are officially still at war, as Israel never signed an armistice with Lebanon in 1949. Libya has been neutralized as a state and is no threat to Israel. The new government of Tunisia is saying that they want diplomatic relations with Israel, and this is setting off huge demonstrations in Tunisia. Algeria is not friendly with Israel, but they are no threat either. The same is true in Morocco.

Turkey is also unfriendly, but they are no threat either, and they have been working closely with the Israelis in Syria. Israeli and Turkish intelligence were embedded in Al Qaeda in Syria, along with US, Saudi, and UAE intelligence. If you recall back when Aleppo was finally being liberated, there were intense negotiations going on at the end because there were some allied intelligence officers who had taken refuge in the last holdouts of the city. This included 10-12 US intelligence agents who were embedded in Syrian Al Qaeda.

A lot of people in the region are playing a very dirty game these days!

This previously published article (December 2017) on Global Research reveals the well-calculated plan of the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia on inciting a “civil war” in Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah.

Israel – seemingly leading the squad with the green signal from Washington – has just fabricated yet another grounds for war.

***

Washington’s plan to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ultimately failed. Now Lebanon seems to be in the cross-hairs with tensions between Israel and Hezbollah on the same level that led to the 2006 Lebanon war. There is also the possibility that a new offensive against Syria that might take place as Washington maintains its troop levels in the devastated country caused by ISIS and other terrorists groups they supported. Various reports suggests that the Pentagon may reveal that there are close to 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria even though ISIS has been defeated. So why is Washington staying in Syria? Will there be another attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the near future? Most likely, yes. Adding the Trump administration’s continued hostilities towards Iran, the drumbeats of a new war in the Middle East is loud and clear.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have one main objective at the moment and that is to destabilize Lebanon and attempt to defeat Hezbollah before they prepare for another offensive in Syria to remove Assad from power. Before they declare an all-out war on Iran, they must neutralize their allies, Hezbollah and Syria, which is by far an extremely difficult task to accomplish.

The Israeli government knows that it cannot defeat Hezbollah without sacrificing both its military and civilian populations. Israel needs the U.S. military for added support if their objective is to somewhat succeed. Israel and the U.S. can continue its support of ISIS and other terrorist groups to create a new civil war in Lebanon through false-flag terror operations which in a strategic sense, can lead to an internal civil war.

Can Hezbollah and the Lebanese military prevent terrorist groups from entering its territory? So far they have been successful in defeating ISIS on the Lebanon-Syria border and will most likely be successful in preventing a new U.S.-supported terrorist haven in Lebanon. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri who originally resigned from his post while visiting the Saudi Kingdom and then suspended his resignation is a sign that a political crisis has been set in motion. So what happens next?

The Curse: Lebanon’s Natural Resources and the Greater Israel Project

In the case of a devastating war on Lebanon, with a civil war intact, Israel would surely attempt to take control over Lebanon’s natural resources. Since Trump got in the White House, Israel has expanded its Jewish settlements through land seizures throughout Palestine at unprecedented levels and with the occupation of the Golan Heights (a Syrian territory), they already control a portion of oil, gas, and vital water supplies. Lebanon would be a huge bonus.

In 2013, Lebanese Energy Minister Gebran Bassil estimated that Lebanon has around 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore. With Lebanon’s political chaos and Israel preparing for a long-term war with Hezbollah, all of this leads to Israel Shahak’s The Zionist Plan for the Middle East which states the intended goal for the fragmentation of Lebanon and other adversaries in the Middle East:

3) This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.

4) The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon but Syria and Jordan as well in fragments.

This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980’s,” talks about “far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967” that are created by the “very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel.

Israel is gearing up for a long and devastating war against Hezbollah, an Iranian-ally which is based in Lebanon’s southern region to deter Israel’s expansionist ideas. As Saudi Arabia (Israel’s closest ally in the region) continues its immoral and devastating war on Yemen, it is raising tensions with Iran. According to Thomas L. Friedman’s article Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, At Last praising who he calls “M.B.S.” or Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, for his reformist policies. According to Friedman:

“Iran’s “supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,” said M.B.S. “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.”

The Trump administration’s continued support of the Saudi Monarchy which negotiated an arms deal worth billions has only emboldened the Saudi government to take an aggressive stand towards its adversaries in the Middle East namely, Iran.

Lebanon Prepares for Another War

On November 21st, Reuters published an article titled Lebanon army chief warns of Israel threat amid political crisis based on Lebanon’s Army Chief warning his troops to be on high alert concerning Israel’s aggressive behavior along the southern border. It was reported:

“Lebanon’s army chief told his soldiers on Tuesday to be extra vigilant to prevent unrest during political turmoil after the prime minister quit, and accused Israel of “aggressive” intentions across the southern frontier” despite Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s return to Lebanon and decision to put his resignation on hold.

“Troops should be ready to “thwart any attempt to exploit the current circumstances for stirring strife” and that “the exceptional political situation that Lebanon is going through requires you to exercise the highest levels of awareness.”

Israel understands that a defeat against Hezbollah and the Lebanese military will be absolutely difficult to accomplish, therefore preparations to engage Hezbollah this time will be an effort to create as much damage as possible and reduce their military capabilities, maybe in time for U.S. troops to enter the war through Syria and coordinate targets with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). As I mentioned earlier, and may I add with an interesting choice of words, a report published by Reuters on November 24th suggests that the Pentagon might announce how many troops they have in Syria:

Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon could as early as Monday publicly announce that there are slightly more than 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria. They said there was always a possibility that last minute changes in schedules could delay an announcement. That is not an increase in troop numbers, just a more accurate count, as the numbers often fluctuate.

A War That No One Will Win

The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), an establishment think-tank based in New York City published an article on July 30th of this year by neocon warmonger Eliot Abrams who was a deputy assistant and deputy national security adviser for President George W. Bush titled The Next Israel-Hezbollah Conflict admits that “the next war is a war that will not be “won” by Israel or Hezbollah.”

Abrams said that “Israel’s realistic war aims will not match the damage it will suffer—and the damage it will necessarily inflict” in reference to a strategic assessment by a report by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies titled Political and Military Contours of the Next Conflict with Hezbollah by Gideon Sa’ar, an Israeli politician and a former Likud member of the Knesset, and Ron Tira, a strategist, Israeli Air Force officer and pilot, highlights what Israel’s realistic goals should be:

Israel’s objectives in a future conflict will be derived first and foremost from what it wants to achieve in the distinct context (such as, for example, preventing Hezbollah’s buildup of certain qualitative edge capabilities or preventing deployment of high quality Iranian weapon systems in Syria).

But a review of the fundamental data reveals a few “generic” objectives that could be applicable in many contexts: postponing the following conflict, shaping the rules for the routine times that will follow the conflict, increasing deterrence with respect to Hezbollah and third parties, undermining the attractiveness of Hezbollah’s war paradigm (use of rockets and missiles hidden among the civilian population), preserving Israel’s relations with its allies, and creating the conditions to reduce Iranian involvement in the post-war reconstruction of Lebanon, as well as imposing new and enforceable restrictions on the freedom of access of the Iran-Alawite-Hezbollah axis.

The strategic assessment mentioned what realistic goals Israel can achieve when the conflict takes place according to the assessment:

There is only a limited range of “positive” and achievable objectives that Israel can hope to attain from Hezbollah and from Lebanon. While the purpose of an armed conflict is always political, in many contexts it is hard to find a political objective that is both meaningful and achievable at a reasonable cost, and that is the reason for the basic lack of value that can be found in an Israel- Hezbollah military conflict.

The reason that an Israeli defeat over Hezbollah is impossible according to Mr. Abrams’s conclusion is because of Russia’s presence in the region:

That’s because Russia cannot be expelled, Lebanon will remain roughly half-Shia, and Hezbollah will survive—as will its relationship with Iran. After the war, the best assumption would be that Hezbollah will rebuild as it did after 2006. But Hezbollah would achieve nothing positive in such a conflict, suffering immense damage and bringing immense destruction upon Lebanon. Its only possible “gain” is the damage it would inflict on Israel. In a way this is the only “good news.”

Israel’s Economy During Wartime

David Rosenberg’s opinion piece Israel’s Next War: We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet on the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict in the Israel-based news source Haaretz explains the consequences of war and how it effects Israel’s economy. Rosenberg said that:

In 2014, the missile war wasn’t a threat so much as a spectacle, as Israelis watched Iron Dome missiles bring down Qassam rockets, to applause. Score one for the home team.

However, Rosenberg claims that the next war with Hezbollah will be different, in fact it will effect Israel’s economy in several ways:

The next war isn’t going to look like that. The round figure everyone uses for Hezbollah’s missile arsenal is 100,000. That is a suspiciously round figure and is probably wrong, but no one disputes that the Shiite militia is well-armed, and more importantly, many of its missiles carry much more powerful warheads and are much more accurate than they were in 2006. Hezbollah’s arsenal includes attack drones and coast-to-sea missiles, too. For its part, Israel is also better prepared. Iron Dome, which is designed to bring down short-range rockets, has been complemented by the introduction of the David’s Sling and Arrow systems, designed to intercept long-range rockets and ballistic missiles, respectively.

But against an onslaught of thousands of missiles, no Domes, Slings or Arrows will be able to provide the kind of defense Israelis have grown used to. Israel’s infrastructure and economic activity are vulnerable to even a limited missile attack from Hezbollah. Geographically, Israel is a small country with no hinterland, which means facilities for electric power and water are concentrated in small areas. More than a quarter of electric power is generated at just two sites. Natural gas is produced at a single offshore field and delivered via a single pipeline. A large portion of our exports derive from a single industrial plant. A prolonged missile war will almost certainly bring business to a halt.

Israel’s economy will shrink within a short-time period, according to Rosenberg:

In the worst-case scenario, a post-war Israel would no longer be seen by global investors and businesses as a safe place to put their money and do deals. Imagine Startup Nation without the constant flow of cross-border capital and mergers and acquisitions. The fantasy land of the last 11 years would disappear in a matter of days or weeks.

Rosenberg is correct. For example, during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, Israel was faced with economic uncertainties. The Times of Israel published an article during the conflict with an appropriate title War depresses people, economy; strong shekel harmful clarified what experts said on how the economy would be effected during a “drawn-out” conflict:

Experts temper the pessimism by noting that in the past, the Israeli economy has been resilient. If the current conflict is resolved quickly, there may be little cause for concern. On the other hand, a drawn out conflict in Gaza may cause investors to worry about the country’s stability and could cause long term damage to Israel’s reputation and position as a key player in the global economy.

“Our key concerns are the openness of the Israeli economy and our ability to be a key player in the global markets,” Zvi Eckstein, former deputy governor of the Bank of Israel and dean of the School of Economics at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). Herzliya noted in an interview with The Times of Israel. “It’s really still a key uncertainty how the conflict will end up,” said Eckstein. “Most people predict we will get back to the same relatively stable geopolitical situation as we were in early July, and if so, I would say the economy would rebound back later next year. But if not, the threat to Israel’s economy would be quite devastating.”

That conflict was against a weaker adversary, Hamas. For starters, a war with Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Syria however would have a negative impact on Israel’s tourism industry where it receives more than 3 million tourists (mainly from the U.S. and Europe) per year. Israel’s level of production will also take a hit. The Street published an interesting article How Is Israel’s Economy Affected by the Current War? explaining what happened to Israel’s economy during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict:

The Israeli economy suffers directly from reductions in productivity every time missile alert sirens send the country’s residents into bomb shelters. The economic costs of the war are estimated upwards of $2.9 billion, and already the war has soaked up 1.2% of the GDP. In the event that quiet prevails after a ceasefire is reached, the Israeli economy is resilient enough to withstand the costs of this operation.

History reflects that the Israeli economy surged at a rate of 6% prior to the 2006 Lebanon war and then slowed down to 2.9% prior to this current conflict. The tourism sector is going to be particularly hard hit, and if a third Intifada ensues, the economic costs for Israel could be crippling. Since a big chunk of Israel’s workforce is enlisted in the IDF, productivity declines are widespread and costs are mounting. The IMA (Israel Manufacturers Association) has already listed a figure of $240 million in losses as a result of the war effort.

Another War, Another Tragedy

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. want to permanently eliminate the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance, and to achieve that goal, Lebanon will have to become another Libya, causing more chaos in an already volatile situation. The only beneficiaries in this coming war are Israel and the U.S., if of course, they are victorious. The U.S. and their allies would re-establish themselves as the hegemonic power in the Middle East with absolute control over the natural resources including oil, gas, and water. Israel would also expand and conquer more territory for Greater Israel. Saudi Arabia would remain a vassal state with more political leverage over its neighbors.

And if Saudi Arabia foolishly decided to go to war with Iran, the House of Saud will inevitably collapse, since Iran is much more stronger, militarily speaking. Washington plans to keep its military presence in Syria are a signal that removing Assad from power is still on the agenda. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Trump administration (decertifying the Iran Nuclear Deal with the intention to eventually kill the deal) is a recipe for a planned long-term conflict. Israel’s economy would suffer a major setback if they were to launch an attack against Hezbollah.

Besides, the fact that a war against Hezbollah would mean that missiles would constantly strike within Israel creating a massive amount of stress on Israeli citizens and a downturn of the economy would only add another dimension to the wide-reaching full-scale war. Israel hopes that Hezbollah will be temporally neutralized until the U.S. Congress and the Trump Administration jointly approve another military and economic aid package worth billions in time to continue its wars. Then there is the possibility of a joint U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israeli orchestrated attack on Syria to remove Assad from power to ultimately isolate Iran, but with Russia and China backing Iran, it would be a no-win situation. The biggest loser in all of its foreign policy blunders is the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Israel’s plan to launch more aggressive wars against its neighbors to further an expansionist objective would come at a great cost to Israeli citizens, as their economy sinks into the rabbit hole, and the threat of incoming missiles from southern Lebanon makes it that much more worst. Lebanon and to an extent Israel will be once again devastated by a new war. For both sides of the border, it is a formula for disastrous consequences.

The UN is also completely controlled by the US. Notice that they went into Iraq after our Nazi-like war of aggression and subsequent occupation and colonization of Iraq. They went in there to give the UN’s stamp of approval to this sickening and completely illegal war of conquest. I am so happy that Zarqawi bombed the UN building, killing the UN official assigned to give cover to the occupation of Iraq along with 41 other UN thugs.

Remember when the US staged a coup to over throw Aristide in Haiti? His crime? He raised the minimum wage. This even angered the Clintons, as the Clintons have assets in low-wage factories in Haiti. He also built more schools in eight years than had been built in the previous 200 years. Any country in our Monroe Doctrine backyard that tries to help its people in any way is usually called Communist and attacked by the gangsters in the Pentagon and CIA.

After Aristide was overthrown, the US put in a new government and formed a new military because “liberal Democrat” Bill Clinton had forbidden Aristide to have a military! With no military, this set him up for a coup cooked up by the CIA with a fascist army operating out of Trujillo-land, I mean the Dominican Republic.

The CIA helped reform the Tonton Macutes reformed, who soon set about murdering Aristide supporters. In a short period of time, the reformed Macutes murdered over 3,000 Aristide supporters. During this period, the criminal UN were called in to ratify the US coup. UN soldiers from three different countries stood by and did nothing while the Macutes death squads raged across the land. In fact, the UN army spent most of its time on the edges of the huge slums trying to keep the people from fighting back against the death squads. In this way, the UN army was actually part of the death squad apparatus, pacifying the slums and encircling them so the death squads could murder with greater impunity.

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Answered on Quora. I got a comment on this article from a woman that I think is very interesting. First she said, when I think of America as a person, I feel very uncomfortable. And well you should! Narcissists and sociopaths make a lot of people shiver. Then she tried to answer the question of how in heck did this country end up this way. She traces Radical Individualism, the true and only religion that America has ever had, to the type of immigrants who came to our shores. She may be onto something.

It might sound strange but whenever I picture the US as a person, I am not comfortable.

Where did this culture start? It seems probable that most colonists had this particular mindset. They were economically driven to obtain a better position for themselves, leaving behind nearly everything. Not everyone is cut out to do so, emotionally. So the US were more or less filled with strong willed entrepreneurs, looking out for number one. Religion is for Sundays (Saturdays); your own thrive and survival for the rest of the week. And for the newly arrived: adapt or die trying.

If you are conservative to reactionary, it’s a great place to live, as the US is clearly one of the most rightwing places on Earth and has been for a long time. Do you believe in radical individualism or “let em die” Libertarianism. America is the home for such things. America is one of the most callous countries on Earth and its foreign policy has always been vicious and wicked. It believes that there one set of rules for it and another set for its enemies.

It commits Nazi-like wars of aggression against its enemies all the time. America is the worst bully on the planet and has been for a very long time. America has always been for the rich and the corporations and has always treated its workers, poor, low income, and minorities like complete garbage. It hasn’t even treated its middle classes very well, but it took them forever to figure it out.

The hatred of working people and unions in the US is off the charts. This one of the only countries on Earth that actually hates labor unions. America is one of the only countries on Earth that hates government. Any time the government tries to help the people, Americans react in rage and revolt. This is one of the only countries on Earth where people hate paying taxes because that means that they have to share with other Americans. Americans are the most aggressively selfish people on Earth.

This is one of the only countries on Earth that actually hates public education (because it helps the people), and it has been rolling it back and privatizing it ever since. Botswana is the only country besides the US that does not have a government health system. This is because Americans are so callous that they don’t care if other Americans get sick or die. The message is that if you are not rich, you don’t deserve healthcare and you need to die.

American foreign policy has only helped the top 20% of the people in the countries it engages. Anytime any country tries to help its workers or its ordinary people in any way, for example trying to help the 80% bottom instead of the 20% top, it gets attacked in one way or another by the US.

A prime example is the minimum wage. Many nations in Latin America have been attacked by the US for simply daring to wage the minimum wage! Aristide in Haiti raised the minimum wage and built more schools in eight years than in the previous 200. For these crimes, death squads were sent against its people, killing thousands of them, and kidnapping Aristide at gunpoint.

The President of Honduras raised the minimum wage. For this, he was ousted by a US coup, imprisoned in a foreign embassy and threatened with death, a new coup government was put in by the US, and the US set up death squads that have now murdered over 1,000 people.

Any time a country tries to do anything nationalist to keep from being a colony of the US and its allies, the US attacks it. The US wants to keep most of the Earth in bondage to the US, their resources plundered, their people immiserated, so all of the wealth in the land goes to the US. America is the new Roman Empire and most of the world is made up of our vassals.

The purpose of the US military is to threaten any nation that tries to help itself or its people with annihilation. That’s what you are signing up for when you join the military. Thing is that Americans love all of this. They cheer for it, for this is the essence of US patriotism or jingoism. Even US liberals support almost everything that I wrote above. I am always shocked when I speak to US liberal Democrats by how much they have bought into the patriotic reactionary swill.

The basis for all of this is something called radical individualism. US foreign policy is based on something called US imperialism that says that the US is dictator the world and most of the countries in it are slaves and colonies of the US. The American people love radical individualism and US imperialism. Even many liberal Democrats do. Almost all liberal Democrats support US imperialism to the hilt.

All of this is maintained by a completely controlled media controlled by very rich people and huge corporations. This media is viciously anti-people and only supports the rich and the corporations – the only two groups the US has ever represented and fought for.

We have never had a single day of democracy in this country. We started to finally head that way in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and the rich and the corporations founded think tanks and wrote many papers on how to shut down radical democracy in the US. The results of this are, among other things, mass voter disenfranchisement and Jim Crow style voting restrictions designed to keep Black people from voting.

Since 2000, the wealthy and corporate elite discovered voting machines and started stealing elections this way. They have been doing it ever since and it has only gotten worse with time. In 2000, the Supreme Court legalized an actual theft of an election. In 2016, many states went to court to stop recounts in states that were obviously stolen by Republicans with voting machines. Courts in all of these states ruled that recounting the stolen elections was illegal.

Almost every state in the US is radically gerrymandered so that democracy is shattered. For instance, a Democrat could win the popular vote and still lose 86% of the seats to Republicans. This is the case in Alabama, Wisconsin, Virginia, and many other places. The Republicans only need two more states, and then the rich and the corporations will write a constitutional convention to rewrite the constitution to take out everything democratic in it to perpetuate continuous rule by reactionary rich people and corporations. At that time, democracy will have surely died.

With the election of Donald Trump, we see an actual American fascism taking shape. Of course this fascism has always lurked in the background, and in fact I would say we have always been a fascist country or at least a radical rightwing authoritarian country in many ways. But this is the most overt fascism we have seen in the US in a very long time.
The hatred for democracy runs deep in the bones of Americans and right now, maybe 1/3 of the population is overtly fascist. I would say that America has always been a great country for rightwingers, as it has been a far rightwing country for most of its history. The jingoists, patriots, and flag wavers are almost all rightwingers and always have been. This is their paradise and it always has been.

That is why rightwingers, reactionaries, and fascists have been flooding to the US for many years now. This is considered to be the Rightwing Dreamland of the rich and corporate classes the world over. In fact, our immigration policy was deliberately set up for many years to favor rightwingers and reactionaries and to keep leftwing immigrants out. This only made the country more and more rightwing. Incredibly, the Democratic Party supported this favoring of rightwing immigrants and opposing of leftwing immigrants.

The Democratic Party and Democratic Presidents have been part of the whole process above for most our history. They just push it forward less hard and sometimes they tinker around the edges to do something for the people. We had a large populist uprising from 1910–1920 in the US and then again in the Great Depression. For the first time in its history, the US government actually worked for the people and did many things to benefit the common man instead of just taking money from the bottom 80% and giving it to the top 20% or even 1%, which has been the American Way from Day One.

I would say that if you are a conservative or even a “liberal” who thinks all of the above is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you are correct. America is your paradise. A lot of people love this conservative – reactionary or even now fascist or Libertarian land. It’s their oyster. It’s the apple of their eye. I don’t blame them for feeling that way.

But it has always puzzled me how liberal or leftwing Americans could love this wildly reactionary country. I believe they have been brainwashed by patriotism and bullied into going along with the project. I have seen many liberals and even out and out Leftists shouting jingoistic tripe, screaming that America is the best country on Earth (83% of Americans believe this silliness), and ordering anyone who disagrees to leave the country. The enforced jingoism runs deep.

But really what is there to like here for a liberal to progressive person? Honestly not even one single thing. How could the most rightwing country on Earth be some leftwing paradise? It makes no sense.

So there you have it. America is great for rightwingers. This is their ultimate dream. For liberals and especially for progressive people, it has always been a dystopian Hell, one of Dante’s nine circles.

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I did not like this war one bit, but I think we should go easy on the guys who fought over there. Face it, they are just pawns. Their country called, they answered. If if their country called them for a dubious thing, the fact that they answered is still worth something. My main beef against the US military is that we hardly ever fight on the side of the good guys anymore. We are always for the bad guys or at least fighting for some dubious cause.

And we commit war crimes like crazy, though we seem to be getting a lot better about this. The Rules of Engagement in Iraq were much stricter than in Vietnam and certainly than in Korea, where I wonder if we were even following any rules at all. We need to knock it off with the White Phosphorus already though. We no longer use napalm (thank God!) and we have ended the use of cluster bombs (good show!). We really need to end the use of all depleted uranium ammunition though. The stuff is toxic as Hell and it’s got to go.

Almost no enemy POW’s were executed in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am afraid that we did this in Vietnam (CIA’s abominable Phoenix Plan), and in Korea, it looks like there were some terrible cases of this and even of US troops executing hundreds of South Korean civilians. My Lai was not the only massacre in Vietnam. There were many more smaller ones. It was fairly common for US soldiers to rape and murder young Vietnamese women villagers, especially in enemy territory. No, I do not approve of setting huts on fire in villages. Free-fire zones were a complete abomination. Carpet bombing with B-52’s is madness. The use of Agent Orange was an outrage.

US troops were not really monsters. After Tet, severe cynicism set in among US soldiers. Drug use skyrocketed, especially heroin, and I believe ceasefires were often negotiated with the local NVA or Viet Cong. Fragging or assassination of hated officers by those under the command rose to epidemic levels. Many to most of the men felt that the cause they were fighting for was complete bullshit, and they were probably right. We had a draft in the US, and those men were called up and ordered to serve. You can hardly fault a soldier for being drafted into war.

But I will say that the US military is damn good. And I can respect that. The 173rd Airborne was legendary in Vietnam. It has long been said to be one of the finest units in the US military, and I believe they may still exist.

Does it make sense to say that you thought the war was a great big mistake and still thank the men who served for their service? I don’t know, but I am going to do it anyway.

Judith Mirville: The Second Amendment was written in view of defending the young Republic in sparsely populated counties where you could be attacked by foreign marauders (it then included slaving marauders from Muslim North Africa as the country was still too poor to afford a real combating coastguard) without other recourse than your own fighting capacity. It was never meant to defend your individual property against the general citizenry, otherwise it would have been seen by all as tantamount to a return to feudalism, by definition.

The second amendment specified that anywhere there was sufficient official protection from foreign enemies and outlaws the individual bearing of weapons was not to be tolerated as a way of life and should be subject to about the same restrictions as in any civilized country of the Old World.

Switzerland decided about individual bearing of arms for the same reason : most of the land was mountainous wilderness where official authority was not available and was to be provided by inhabitants taking turns to patrol. Switzerland being in Europe, it could not escape defining even stricter norms of arms control for its citizens than the neighboring countries : you are entitled only to keep and bear weapons in as much as you do it as a soldier of your country, albeit on a part-time basis, and as soon as you tote one, you tote it in conformity with precise military orders.

I do favor an enlarged body of weapons-toters, so as for any wacko shooter to be sure that in case he starts his rampage his fire is most likely to be answered in kind, but anybody bearing arms according to the second amendment should do it as a voluntary US soldier, subject to military penalties as soon as he doesn’t obey the local military command as to the proper use of his military material. Any citizen should be granted the right to ask any weapon tote his voluntary soldier’s particular identity and particular reason to bear it (like acting as a voluntary vigilante in a drug lord ridden ghetto) in the same way he is entitled to ask any policeman’s uniform bearer his identity as a policeman.

I for one am thinking that America is now dividing into two : those for whom the first amendment about free speech and free expression is the only real sacred one, which includes the right to express oneself without any chance to be hit by stray bullets from frustrated control freaks ans therefore gun control, and those for whom the second amendment only is sacred, which includes your sacred rights to use your gun to suppress voices you claim as Unamerican or dissident.